Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Huh?Adventures into Darkness combines several things I love: alternate history, Lovecraft, superheroes, and odd niche game materials. Honestly it is such a strange product, you have to love it. I read the Mutants and Masterminds 2e version, but it is also published for HERO System (the version with the highest page count) and Truth and Justice. Hite describes the premise simply: "an RPG sourcebook from an alternate history, one where H.P. Lovecraft somehow survived long enough to write comic-book superheroes for Nedor Comics". Interestingly, Nedor Comics is a real publisher, whose characters have entered into the public domain. If you know comics you may recognize some of them from Alan Moore's Tom Strange and Terra Obscura. More recently Jim Krueger and Alex Ross have been working with the characters for Project: Superpowers from Dynamite Entertainment.

Kadath Mystery TheaterThe sourcebook's laid out pretty simply: it opens with a little background that sets up how Lovecraft in this world became a comics writer. Essentially Randolph Carter serves as an entry point- a weird pulp adventurer whose adventures intersect with superhero-dom and expand the Nedor Universe. The six pages lay out this story completely. This section's filled with in-jokes about Lovecraft's history but more importantly, commentary on how Lovecraft's legacy ended up used by August Dereleth and others. Hite pokes a good deal of fun at Lovecraftian scholarship that take s a "high brow" approach. But the amazing thing is how plausible he makes all of this sound. He brings in enough of the real (Julius Schwartz's real world connection to HPL for example) to sustain belief. He has a clear grasp of fantastic fiction publishing in that era, as well as comic publishing of those times. As always, Hite creates a consistent and interesting interesting alternate history.

I love that it provides a strange, "artifact" approach to presenting alt history. Its an rpg sourcebok from an alternate universe. So you have a couple levels of defraction there. There's a Howard Waldrop story which presents an alternate old west where traveling scientist rainmakers battled against land barons for influence. But Waldrop doesn't tell that story directly. Instead he talks about movies made in the 1940's telling the stories of that period. But even that isn't told directly- instead that's explained in the form of clippings and interviews from film magazines about the movies about that period.

I Punch CthulhuThe gist of the setting revolves around the addition of Lovecraftian concepts in the most pulpy and four-color fashion. So we get Nodens as an analog of Dr. Fate. Randolph Carter becomes the Dream Master. For villains, with have Asenath the Body Snatcher; Dagon; Yithian Agents; Keziah the Witch & Brown Jenkin; and even a version of Nyarlathotep. Each has a biography along with an associated stat block. The original Nedor Comics characters (The Fighting Yank, The Liberator, Mystico) are presented as well. They remain true to the original, but with some discussion of how Lovecraft and his crew of writers used them. All of it is very clever- especially interesting if you know something about the source, but funny on their own. That takes up about half the book- twenty four pages- with nice full color illustrations to complement most of the characters. I should mention the graphic design of the book- simple, useful and really carrying the tone of the times. There's an amusing full page "price guide" for these imaginary issues, which actually provides some plot ideas.

Applied InsanityHite spends seven pages talking about how one brings together the world of Lovecraft with superheroes. Its useful- ideas on how to make it fun while still keeping some of the original themes intact (from both sides). There's such weirdness already in this period of comics (especially if you've read anything like I Shall Destroy All The Civilized Planets!) it isn't too far of a stretch. Hite provides some nice tools, include mechanics for how one might apply sanity rules to MnM. If nothing else, these kinds of stories could make a change of pace from a normal supers game. It would be funny to have players travel back into what they imagine is a glorious Golden Age world of the past, only to discover their heroic ancestors battling these kinds of foes.

The final five pages of the book walk through Hite's logic in creating this setting and show how he connected things to the real world. He lays out the actual events and shows where they could have changed significantly. He even spins thing out a little further, suggesting that a career in the movies could have be a possibility as well. That's a nice touch and ties in tangentially to another Hite sourcebook, Shadows Over Filmland.

OverallI enjoyed reading this book. I wouldn't necessarily run a campaign of it, but I might use some of the concepts presented here for a mini-series or as a side-arc in a longer game. But I think one of the real pleasures here comes from the reading of the book. People who hunt for well-written game ideas, who like Lovecraft, and/or have a fascination with comic book history will all find something to like here. The only other supers book I've read that comes close to building this kind of complete history would be another overlooked great book Omlevex. I'd recommend this for supers GMs with eclectic tastes especially.

PortabilityThe game stats here can easily be replicated in other superhero systems, as evidenced by the three flavors published. I'm not sure how useful this would be for another kind of game, unless you wanted to have this particular alt history (Lovecraft as comic book scribe) in that world.

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

* So a general question in case anyone knows: I'm going up to C2E2 in Chicago this weekend. Does anyone know if there will be any game company presence there? I know it is a comic and pop media show generally, but I curious about what else might be there. I suspect most companies will be at GAMA instead, but I hoped to find some IPR stuff.

* On a related note, DC Comics put out the teaser details on the upcoming "Project Superman" for the Flashpoint event. You can see the cover image here. Gene Ha will be doing the art and I will be scripting.

Sunday, March 13, 2011

What Is It?A second collection of columns providing rich material for high weirdness in games.

This is the second, and as of this writing, last volume in this series. You can find my review for the first volume here. Since both share some structural features, I've duplicated some of the preliminary and closing material between the two reviews. This review wraps up "Conspiracy Week" here at the blog. Remember: Live Every Week Like It's Conspiracy Week.

Prepare for TransmissionKennth Hite’s columns originally appeared in the print and then electronic form of Pyramid. Hite worked on some of the most interesting and fringey GURPS products (Weird War II, Horror) and well magnificent recent products (Grim War, Trail of Cthulhu, Dubious Shards). He wrote about 301 columns, of which only 68 have been collected in the two volumes of these anthologies. Online, Hite had the ability to provide links, something lost in the print versions of the columns. I don’t think that a huge loss. In place of that, these collections bring together thematically-related material in five sections. He also provides extensive footnoting and commentary on the material in the sidebar. In this he manages to really make use of the classic widebar & sidebar design common to the SJG products. All of the articles are system agnostic- no stats or numbers. However Hite does tie particular ideas to certain games- suggesting how some of the ideas might be fit into those rules or that setting. Most often he references GURPS products, but that's mostly referring to the kind of genre they reflect. The materials still universally useful.

So What Are They?Each column riffs on a topic-- be it a particular genre, a person, an event, an idea. He brings together many and disparate sources, showing the strange connections between them. In one approach, he takes a concept and shows the many different "readings" one can put to it. His essay "Jacks Wild: Six Stabs at the Ripper" (included in this collection) takes this approach. It's amazing what he accomplishes in 3-4 pages each. Some columns give ideas for whole campaigns, while others can be used to inform the themes of a game. All of them are thought provoking, all of them showed me something new, and all of them are well-written. Hite's tour-guide voice carries him breezily through these pieces. They're universally fun.

The Second BroadcastThis volume opens short, goofy poem by John M. Ford (author of the legendary Paranoia module The Yellow Clearance Black Box Blues). Hite provides a quick two-page introduction which lays out his approach and structure. The articles chosen for the volume represent a cross-section of the original pieces and fall in a different order. Hite offers notes for each indicating where they fall relative to one another- for those so inclined to read them that way. Perhaps that a Dictionary of the Khazars approach? The body of Suppressed Transmission: the Second Broadcast breaks into five sections, each with a theme. I'm going to walk through those sections, but I don't want to give away too much about the material. There's real pleasure to uncovering this yourself. Instead, I'll general describe the section, give a list of "keywords" drawn from the articles, and then talk about a single representative essay.

DesignI didn't talk about this in my review of ST: the First Broadcast, in part because I was working from a pdf version. I'd originally encountered the ST articles online, using a simple and clean text design, with the occasional image thrown in. Hite extensively hyperlinked his references. The printed version for The Second Broadcast reveals the one problem I have with these anthologies: the graphic design. In a word it is busy. That's something I can usually handle and I think it reflects the subject matter. But there's comes a point in reading through this volume that I felt overwhelmed. The book itself is design like a GURPS 3e supplement-- with thicker paper and binding which means that you have to be careful not to split the spine- in turn a problem since you need to open the book wide to read everything. Some of these SJ Games books had softer binding and the ability to open wider, which would be a welcome change for this.

Hite has a great articles considering how supers might fit into the cultural histories of a number of civilizations. I've talked about that idea of supers out of time before. But I also love his piece "Shades of Black: Alternate Black Ops." He takes the idea of the agency dedicated to fight against the strange and transports it to a variety of settings. My oft-planned, but not yet implemented Hellboy Ancient Rome campaign comes in great part from reading this years ago. He gives several versions. The Black Bards protect mankind from the Fae...

...which now that I think about it would be something great to bring up into a modern Changeling the Lost group. Humans armed with some talents who have watched the Keepers evolve and who have fought against them. Some see the Changelings themselves as victims, others as adversaries. It wouldn't exactly be a Hunter set of NPCs, but could be a lens to show the players the historical reading on these events...And see this is how Hite's stuff works. I was just skimming through again and these ideas popped up. Suppressed Transmission is the ultimate idea-generating book for any kind of campaign.

Back to what I was saying, The Black Order watches the world of the Crusades for any sign of strange magicks (this recent Ironclad movie, perhaps?). Queen Elizabeth's Black Operatives of the School of Night secure the Caribbean for Queen and Country. The swashbuckling operatives of the Black League moving in the shadows of Paris. The Black Marshalls fight back the menace of Grey influence on the Civil War.

Everyone loves the Templars, and Hite starts with a great essay looking at how they might be worked into the secret history of America. He also takes at look at another staple of weirdness in "Crypto***Icon: The Voynich Manuscript." That's such a fixture of strangeness and he does a great job providing enough background and history for someone new to the concept. In that regard, he gives a GM enough material to have them throw the concept out at the table and have it feel right. He also points at a number of useful secondary sources, with some idea of their take on the object. But as you might expect he also provide a a number of "explanations" which could be used- including the idea of the text as a thing without an explanation.

A few years ago, Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America hit the best-seller lists. Despite being well-written, it disappointed me because I'd already gotten all of the interesting details on H.H. Holmes from the Hite essay which appears here. Likewise a few years ago I bought the Jeanne d'Arc, an SRPG for the Sony PSP. It has you playing a version of Joan of Arc in a fantasy setting. Mind you, one member of your company is Gilles de Rais. That's especially freaky because I read Hite's essay on him "The Maiden and the Monster: Joan of Arc and Gilles de Rais." If you don't know the story, bottom line: guy was nuts. Hite takes the various horrible details of his life and weaves some explanations of his relation with Joan, his later murders, and his strange lineage together with witchcraft, folklore and high strangeness- providing rich material for GMs to smother their players with.

One of the earliest non-Chaosium modules I recall was one called Glozel Est Authentique!. It had an amateur press look to it, so I never really looked at it. I regret not buying it, having read now Hite's essay on the history and pregnant possibilities of the Glozels. Likewise, the City of Irem, referenced in a variety of fantastic fictions, serves as the meeting point of many possibilities. In "City in Dust: Many Columned Irem" gives a rundown of the sources and appearances for this legendary city. He also offers a number of ways in which Irem or like cities can be used in a campaign. His connection of the idea of Irem to a dozen other kinds of weird really stands out in this piece.

The goofiness of characters like Foxbat from the Champions Universe has been with us since the beginning of gaming: bad puns, goofy plots and insanity. Hite has a nice piece considering the many uses and potential misuses of the idea of April Fool's Day in a game. But I'm more taken by another article in this section. One of the Geeklists I have on my plate to do eventually will be one which looks at games which have dead PCs. Hite's article "Things to Do in Gaming When You're Dead" will take center-stage. He looks at a variety of afterlives and sets up ideas of how the mythic might be brought to bear on that phase of a PC's existence. Some of it echoes the concept of Heroquesting from Glorantha, and I can certainly imagine a campaign which would turn halfway through to become that. Anime as a genre does that mid-season switch well-- and think about how you might do a Bleach style game. Just a thought...

OverallJust like the first volume, Suppressed Transmission: the Second Broadcast, presents highly readable and informative essays on the whole universe of strangeness which intersects with the kinds of obscure and geeky knowledge role-players often have. Hite snares that material and presents it in a playable form: playable both in the sense of useful for games but also for the mental play of thinking about new and interesting things. I highly recommend it for any GM interested in games with mystery, conspiracy, weirdness, twists, history, horror, fantasy. In short, I think any GM would benefit from it and players may find themselves inspired as well. The first volume might be a little more accessible, but literally only for Hite's introductory column in that one. Otherwise, they both present equally dynamite material.

Why the Rest need to be ReprintedFor a long time I had an electronic subscription to Pyramid magazine. Each week a new issue would appear, IIRC on Fridays. Honestly, that would make my whole day. There were a couple of other columns I enjoyed, but Hite’s stuff invariably set off in my head a thousand ideas- plots for current games, connections between things I hadn’t seen before, and seeds for entirely new campaigns. If there’s any drawback to the material here, its that there’s almost too much good stuff. It would be nearly impossible to process even a significant portion of it into your gaming life. But as a mine for the diamonds which would slot just right into your campaign, these columns are invaluable. SJ Games still hasn’t put together collections of the rest of these columns. Some of them can be found by purchasing individual electronic issues, but I’m not keen on that. One excuses I’ve heard is that editing and production for these would be cost-prohibitive with the new focus on SJ primarily on BGs and GURPS. While I think the ST format is great, with exceptional value-added through the commentary, I’d just like to have the columns as they were. I would buy a basic pdf or POD product that brought those together. I’d even consider an iTunes approach if I could buy the columns individually.

Thursday, March 10, 2011

This week I pulled together a list of rpg material focused on Conspiracies, Covert Societies, Plots, Plans, Hidden Powers, and Secret History. This honors Ken Hite's Suppressed Transmission, a set of columns which beg to be reprinted (or at the very least released electronically). For the list I chose items where The Conspiracy sits at the heart of the game’s theme-- or in the case of supplements, where that item provides a toolbox of machinations. I'm sure there’s some off (feel free to add to the list!).

But you know evil is an exact scienceBeing carefully correctly wrongShriekback, Nemesis

Title ClassifiedConspiracies ooze cool for GMs, and they’ve changed over time as a theme in rpgs. That’s most visible if you look at how X-Files impacted and infected the kinds of games published. Those concepts obviously appeared earlier than that, however. How conspiracies have appeared in popular culture would be worth tracking. In Victoriana and Pulp material conspiracies end up headed by a diabolical genius, who really stands for the whole (Fu Manchu, Moriarty, John Sunlight). Did the cultural and political shifts in the mid-20th Century influence the wider-ranging, more ideological and stranger conspiratorial fiction of The Crying of Lot 49 and the Illuminatus Trilogy? How did that lead to the endgame for all conspiracy fiction, Foucault's Pendulum? And how, after Eco creates the ultimate commentary and takedown of conspiratorial thinking, do we end up with Dan Brown's writing about exactly the same things and being taken seriously. Can we trace the same kind of arc in films? From Dr. Mabuse to The Man Who Knew Too Much to The Parallax View to Capricorn One to They Live to National Treasure? How about for comics: originally more pulpy approaches to villain groups (Hydra, AIM, Secret Society of Supervillains) in turn produced The Invisibles, Global Frequency and Planetary.

Revisionist Secret HistoryI do love conspiracy and secret history- I was in middle school when I read the Illuminatus Trilogy. At the same time I loved the political machinations and secrets of things like Zelazny (Nine Princes; Lord of Light), LaCarre (Tinker, Tailor; The Secret Pilgrim) and Lovecraft. I have a fairly high tolerance level for revisionist history and weirdness. However, one game line managed to wear away that tolerance and actually make me really hesitant about that stuff. I’m talking about of course, Vampire: the Masquerade and by extension all of the other World of Darkness lines. The first couple of times I read some background material which integrated Vampires with the 'real world' history, I thought it was an interesting approach and a novelty. However very quickly that became irritating: everything had some kind of supernatural source behind it, mostly Vampires. Every really cool, creative or important person in history either was or owed their success to a supernatural. It devalued general achievement, and in some cases had a kind of colonial feel- crediting the "superior" persons. In some cases the rewriting of history bordered on the offensive.

And I think that can actually point us to something about running games with conspiracies, the risk of fatigue. If everything ties back to the conspiracy, players can get burnt out looking for the logical conclusion. If everything's a cover-up, everyone’s in on it and nothings is what it seems, the players end up with no real basis for action. As a player, some of the most irritating moments I’ve had in games have been the "...and this is what was really happening!" GM boast sessions, especially after we’ve hit a brick wall. GMs (and game designers) need to carefully chose their alternate history and curtain-pull backs. That revelation should be a surprise.

Sidebar: Obligatory WarningAs another danger, I think it is worth thinking about the flip side of things: not the actual conspiracies, but the thinking about conspiracies. Made up stories about groups and ideas have for centuries been used as weapons. Conspiratorial thinking can arise out of a variety of mindsets, especially paranoid or fascist thinking. In this day and age, there's a scary sharp edge to these fictions- or non fictions. And people can get tied up in a knot thinking about this. Ironically, a history of conspiracy theories and their dangers I read ended up in the last chapters actually promoting their own conspiracy theories about certain groups. I think its worth keeping in mind the power of these kinds of stories when we start to use them at the table- something we may treat as laughable, others may not find so unbelievable. But, I suspect, the distance of games provides some insulation from these problems.

The Sign of the ThreeYou can break Conspiracy games three types: Hidden Masters, Behind the Curtain, and Secret Handshake. In a Hidden Masters game, the PCs begin with no real knowledge of the "conspiracy." They become involved through the investigation of a mystery or some strange coincidence or accident. Perhaps they have been used as a pawn and discarded. Keep in mind The Conspiracy, and I’m using the term in a generic sense, can be small (a clique trying to control an apartment board; a group trying to seize ideological control of a university department) or large (the plots of COBRA or the Illuminati) and may be mundane (steal money) or weird (alien invasion). Over the course of the adventure, the players uncover the 'truth' and probably decide to fight against or ally with the conspiracy. This can be the work of an episode, an arc or a campaign. There may be multiple conspiracies or multiple levels, with the players digging deeper and deeper with each level showing something new...but let’s be real for a moment. GM’s have to be careful about their spider web of conspiracies. Overcomplication of the story and plot, even if that’s the point of the story, can be a serious killer at the game table. Robin Laws’ in Hamlet's Hit Points makes a trenchant observation about the difficulty of the rpg media: in other story forms players can refer back or have an additional visual set of cues. There’s also a tighter time span typically for the experience. In rpgs, players can get lost in the maze of details (and not in a good way). If only a portion of the group becomes engaged in this complexity, it can divide the group . If that happens, then as the mystery progresses, only certain players will keep up with the ideas. This can work if the mystery’s not at the heart of the game, but if it is the central feature you can count on irritated (and therefore random) players.

The entry point is key in this kind of campaign. One version has players called to what seems like a normal investigation, but one which reveals some broader situation (Hello Fringe!). I like the idea of people being thrust accidentally into things. Here the investigation comes front and center- as in Call of Cthulhu. On the other hand players might find themselves thrust directly into the path of the conspiracy- something like The Prisoner or even Lost. In either case, the GM has to develop a reasonable "excuse" for the game. How is it that the players, over anyone else, manage to put the pieces together? That "excuse" becomes more important the larger and more far-ranging the conspiracy becomes. Most conspiracy games operate as a mystery. Mysteries suggest the ability for the players to solve and logic it out, therefore they require a degree of consistency despite their strangeness. Playing the "It Was Magic!" or "Because They’re Crazy!" card constantly will make players shy away from any kind of thinking about possible solutions.

Before I Kill You, {INSERT NAME HERE}...And sometimes, players think too much about those solutions. I love my wife dearly, and she’s my favorite player at the table. However when it comes to some things I see as "in genre," she has a more hard-nosed and practical approach. I cringe when, during the villain’s plot revelation, she goes "Wait, seriously? That seems incredibly inefficient. Why would you do that?" (In literature I believe this is formally described as the WTF moment). Sometimes when the players investigate or brainstorm, she’ll say it can’t be X because that doesn’t make sense. And she’ll point out some other reasons why. If I’m lucky, she’s right and has eliminated a possibility correctly. If I’m unlucky, she’s found a flaw in my plotting and now I have to rethink things. I’ll admit to occasionally smiling and nodding when she asks about these things...and then desperately scrambling in my head to create a rationalization or a clue to put things back on track. Conspiracies, by nature of their span, secrecy and complexity, are particularly vulnerable to these kinds of GM problems. They require care. Some of them can be justified through genre considerations- in a superhero game, plots have a greater leeway in terms of overcomplexity and stupidity. But in games which implicitly take place in the real world, you don’t want it to feel more artificial and forced. Someone forwarded to me a comment about one of DC’s big event comics, "Essentially this book is fighting, posturing, melodramatic speeches, some torture, leading up to an elaborate plan by Mom, now calling herself Queen Shrike, to get herself back to Earth. I don’t know, it all seems overly complicated and contrived to me." I don’t know if I agree with that assessment, but it does illustrate one possible reaction on your players' parts to overconspiritization*.

Rug Pulling 101Another common danger facing GMs is the impulse to create vast and overwhelming adversaries. The inclination is to have the conspiracy snatch victory away at the last minute. After all, they have the resources to cover things up, make people disappear, or discredit any revelation. That can be a nice device used sparingly, but the bottom line at the table is that players need to win. I don't mean always win, but they need victories. That's a point I visited in another post. A GM has to balance downbeats with upbeats (for more discussion of this see Hamlet's Hit Points). The problem's at the root of the 'cool' of the conspiracy and secret society trope- but the GM has to make a contract with the players about how that's handled. Mind you the terms of victory may be small. Consider The Prisoner where the protagonist wins by surviving and making small changes in his environment. X-Files stands for me as an example where the delayed pay-off and continual successes of the bad guys wore me out. Even when the alien conspiracy seemed revealed, the big showdown happened without the protagonists' intervention. Consider how players, more immediately connected and less a viewer in the situation would feel after four or five seasons of getting nowhere. Its why I like Fringe- they take the best elements of the "Big Plot" and keep moving them forward.

The Truth- Revealed!The other two kinds of campaign frames start with the players in the know. In a "Behind the Curtain" conspiracy campaign, the players know definitively that the conspiracy exists. They're fighting against these secret societies or trying to stop their plots. Esoterrorists, some Call of Cthulhu and Hidden Invasion all begin this way. Players often have some kind of organization supporting them, but may also be independent. This kind of campaign requires the GM to establish a key detail: why can't the conspiracy simply be exposed? Is it a question of evidence? Is the matter too fantastic to be believed? Would the revelation cause panic? Would exposure set off some kind of danger? To take the Esoterrorists as an example: the enemy here gains power from increasing paranoia and fear-- by bringing people into contact with the other side. Exposing them might have some benefit, but at the same time would lend them great power. The show Earth: Final Conflict (or was it Dark Skies?), IIRC, kept the threat that if the enemy actually uncovered how much the protagonists knew, the aliens would set their brutal plans in motion. Feng Shui has the "powers that be" involved, meaning that there's no good means to expose it and no benefit from doing so. The GM should consider how much that logic will shift during the course of a campaign, and how will the players react to it. Some players can become frustrated by these kinds of restrictions, especially if they don't "buy in" to the genre.

Become the MastermindOne way to invest the players in this can be to take that "Behind the Curtain" structure one step further, to what I call the Secret Handshake approach. In this version, players have become active members of the conspiracy. Conspiracy X, Discordia and some versions of GURPS Cabal take this approach. Typically this gives the players access to information and also additional resources. For example ConX has the "pulling strings" feature where players can access contacts, equipment and talents from their previous work. Men in Black's probably the prime example of players on the inside. Once players get in there they have to deal with a whole set of new issues: bureaucracy, conflicting agendas, recruiting, and battling other groups on top of carrying out the "mission." But most importantly, they also have to maintain the secrecy which creates a whole set of conflicting issues. If players don't have access to mental powers or a "flashy thingy" then how do they handle leaks? With ultimate sanction? A game which evolves or moves through these levels can be interesting; the last season of Angel, for example, played this out. Its also worth mentioning an rpg which flips this on its head: Covenants.

Last ThoughtsOK, I'm trying to keep myself from going too much past 2K words. I'd be curious about others' experiences with conspiracies in games: for bad or good. I've had them work well and I've had them end up falling flat on their collective secret faces.

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

What Is It?A collection of columns providing rich material for high weirdness in games.

Prepare for TransmissionHite’s columns originally appeared in the print and then the electronic form of Pyramid Magazine. Hite worked on some of the more interesting and fringey GURPS products (Alternate Earths, Cabal) and well some magnificent recent products (Bookhounds of London, Adventures into Darkness, The Day After Ragnarok). He wrote about 301 columns, of which only 68 have been collected in the two volumes of these anthologies. Online, Hite had the ability to provide links, something lost in the print versions of the columns. I don’t think that a huge loss. In place of that, these collections bring together thematically-related material in five sections. He also provides extensive footnoting and commentary on the material in the sidebar. In this he manages to really make use of the classic widebar & sidebar design common to the SJG products. All of the articles are system agnostic- not stats or numbers. However Hite does tie particular ideas to certain games- suggesting how some of the ideas might be fit into those rules or that setting. Most often he references GURPS products, but that's mostly referring to the kind of genre they reflect. The materials still universally useful.

So What Are They?Each column riffs on a topic-- be it a particular genre, a person, an event, an idea. He brings together many and disparate sources, showing the strange connections between them. His essay "Six Degree of Francis Bacon" (included in this collection) may be the archetype of that- showing how Bacon can be connected to any number of other plots, phenomena, conspiracies and high strangeness. Its amazing what he accomplishes in 3-4 pages each. Some columns give ideas for whole campaigns, while others can be used to inform the themes of a game. All of them are thought provoking, all of them showed me something new, and all of them are well-written. Hite's tour-guide voice carries him breezily through these pieces. They're universally fun.

The First BroadcastThis volume opens with an amusing introduction by John Tynes, an appropriate choice given his games. Hite then gives a short introduction and a preliminary column which serve to orient the reader a little to the method of the material. He points at his favorite themes and uses the example of a book he's recently read to show how he works. The articles chosen for the volume represent a cross-section of the original pieces and fall in a different order. Hite provides notes for each indicating where they fall relative to one another- for those so inclined to read them that way. Perhaps that a Dictionary of the Khazars approach? The body of Suppressed Transmission breaks into five sections, each with a theme. I'm going to walk through those sections, but I don't want to give away too much about the material. There's real pleasure to uncovering this yourself. Instead, I'll general describe the section, give a list of "keywords" drawn from the articles, and then talk about a single representative essay.

Historical Weirdness: Alternate HistoryA look at specific alternate scenarios, aimed at more weird and less hard-sci fi approaches. He also discusses the idea of history itself.

This section contains a piece from one of my favorite series, "Clio’s Nightmares." Each Halloween Hite produced an essay providing alternate-history horror-fantasy seed. This one includes a Clive Barker meets I, Claudius concept I desperately want to steal for a Cthulhu Invictus game. But the best example of the kind of work Hite does comes in "Six Flags Over Roswell." Here he shows how taking one piece of strangeness and dropping it into another setting can be used to generate whole new plots and frames. In this case the aliens crash in very different times. 7/4/1591: Spanish Swashbucklers forced to deal with a Grey Conspiracy brought back to the Old World after the Jesuits overcomes strange wreckage and survivors. 7/4/1827: Texas colonists battle against a alien empowered Santa Ana declaring himself to be "Queztzalcoatl, Returned God-Emperor of the Americas." 7/4/1837: Texans harness a new power, half steam and half anti-matter leading to a new struggle for control. 7/4/1861: The CSA finds allies in the form of Martians and their three-legged war-machines bearing heat beams. 7/4/1881: The Ghost Dance of the Indians activates and drives the alien nanoassemblers, creating a dream made reality. 7/4/1947: Truman's assassination leads to full exposure for Majestic 12 and the Roswell cover-up. Some of those concepts have more appeal to me than others, but any of them could be the start of a solid long or short campaign.

High Weirdness: Fun with PhenomenaConsiders weird things and how they intersect with the other weirdness of the world.

There's a great deal to love in this section, especially where Hite takes apart Shakespeare as a source of weird gaming. But equally interesting is "Digging Up Weirdness" where Hite riffs on the idea of archaeologists as PCs & NPCs, and on the nature of archeological expeditions as a source of adventure. He gives two example of real-world ancient explorers, useful as models for these kinds of character sin other games. He mentions the Bone Wars as a setting for Western adventures (an episode in history best covered in Zander Cannon and Jim Ottaviani's Bone Sharps, Cowboys, and Thunder Lizards). But I really love the idea of the Black-OP archeological team- trained to intercept and interfere in discoveries. They could be a little like the team from Warehouse 13 or perhaps even agents of Time & Temp trying to keep evidence of their actions to a minimum.

High Weirdoes: Villains, Vagrants and VenusiansAs you might guess, here traces the path of certain characters- specific of of a type.

There's a great section giving a guide to all of the "Ultraterrestrials" of history. Hite manages to pull together all of the various legends and rumors into a coherent bunch. There's the feeling throughout that he could take all of that, rearrange it and come back with an equally entertaining and plausible story. But the essay that stands out for me in this section is "Travelin’ Man: Sir John Mandeville." I consider myself fairly well-read and a guy who seeks out obscure details and history, but I'd never heard of Mandeville until I read this. I knew some of the things Hite brought to bear on this mini-bio and overview (Prester John for example). But most of this I had no idea about; Hite manages in the piece to teach me enough to feel comfortable with the ideas, tantalize me with other threads to follow, and give me a dozen ideas about how these things might fit into several kinds of campaigns.

Highly Significant Weirdness: Clashing SymbolsThis section deals with a particular symbol or idea and considers how it might be connected to the strange.

I love the essay on Chess. In a kind of inverse of the Mandeville essay of the previous section, I had a sense of the history involved but he drew lines between it and other things I hadn't considered. But the essay I've actually used heavily is "Red, White, and Real: Coca-Cola." Hite considers all of the history and mythology around this beverage, and especially its role as a symbol for a certain kind of consumerism and progress. He draws alchemical connections and cultural comparisons, with the idea of the magic drink or elixir. But its his last throw-away bit where he links the green-glass bottle of Coke to the Holy Grail that I used. That became the focus point of a major arc in my Unknown Armies campaign. I love that detail and this essay as a whole.

Highly Theoretical WeirdnessI think it would be fair to say this is Hite's catch-all section, dealing with the meta-level of some concepts and applying others from earlier sections in new ways.

This section contains the essay on Francis Bacon, a font of high weirdness, I mentioned earlier. But this also includes "Metro Section Baghdad." This column shows readers how any city can serve as a rich and unique source of role-playing seeds. Hite walks through an assortment headlines from one edition of the LA Times. For each he riffs on how that idea could be recast and twisted to form the basis for a game. There's a real sense of empowerment which comes from watching a master do a trick, close up and showing you how you could do the same thing.

After this section Hite provides his top ten list of major books to read for an introduction to High Weirdness (Foucault's Pendulum; The Books of Charles Fort; Holy Blood, Holy Grail; and so on). There's a sidebar with additional books mentioned as well. There's a further list of other sources and readings and then...an index! And not just a little index, but a two-page deep and thorough one. Its surprising to see that in this kind of book but thumbs up again for the utility of this book.

OverallSuppressed Transmission presents highly readable and informative essays on the whole universe of strangeness which intersects with the kinds of obscure and geeky knowledge role-players often have. Hite snares that material and presents it in a playable form: playable both in the sense of useful for games but also for the mental play of thinking about new and interesting things. I highly recommend it for any GM interested in games with mystery, conspiracy, weirdness, twists, history, horror, fantasy. In short, I think any GM would benefit from it and players may find themselves inspired as well.

Why the Rest Need to be ReprintedFor a long time I had an electronic subscription to Pyramid Magazine. Each week a new issue would appear, IIRC on Fridays. Honestly, that would make my whole day. There were a couple of other columns I enjoyed, but Hite’s stuff invariably set off in my head a thousand ideas- plots for current games, connections between things I hadn’t seen before, and seeds for entirely new campaigns. If there’s any drawback to the material here, its that there’s almost too much good stuff. It would be nearly impossible to process even a significant portion of it into your gaming life. But as a mine for the diamonds which would slot just right into your campaign, these columns are invaluable. SJ Games still hasn’t put together collections of the rest of these columns. Some of them can be found by purchasing individual electronic issues, but I’m not keen on that. One excuses I’ve heard is that editing and production for these would be cost-prohibitive with the new focus on SJ primarily on BGs and GURPS. While I think the ST format is great, with exceptional value-added through the commentary, I’d just like to have the columns as they were. I would buy a basic pdf or POD product that brought those together. I’d even consider an iTunes approach if I could buy the columns individually.

Sunday, March 6, 2011

The Gnome That AroseSo in my past couple of Geeklist-based posts, I've looked at or commented on the particulars of a list. Today I'm going to look at a list which stands for a kind of list- Matt Lewis' "All About Gnomes" list. Here he collects together the various gaming sourcebooks which present rules or details for Gnomish culture. There are other variations on this list, of course: the lists of sdonohue's Elf or trundorn's Dwarf sourcebooks lists for example. Oddly I didn't find any Hobbit/Halfling or Orc list in my searches. I think these types of lists point to one of RPG Geek's strengths-- the geeklist as a tool for users to bring together reference material across systems, game lines and eras. There are any number of typical niche books (planar-cross dimensional books, haunted castles, playing as demons, fantasy psionics) which can be brought together on lists like these-- a more useful approach than tags. In the spirit of these Matt's list, I want to talk briefly about the race in question, Gnomes, and then spin out a little to the question of fantasy races in general.

The list: All About GnomesMommy, Where Do Gnomes Come From?So while I'm going to talk generally about gamer love for particular fantasy races, I do have to address Gnomes in particular. You see, I don't "get" them. I have certain likes and dislikes for other races, but gnomes seem like frippery. I'm agnostic about them. They're some kind of strange stop-gap between Hobbits and Dwarves which appeared somewhere along the line. I'm probably remembering it wrong, but I don't recall Gnomes popping up until later supplements of the original boxed D&D and they weren't in the Blue Box IIRC. Then suddenly we had them, the figure standing in the background of most racial group shots ("Wait, who's that?" "Um...I think that's our Uncle Gnome...he's, an illusionist...I think?"). And who cobbled Illusions on them as a factor-- is that some weird riff from fairy tales? I recall those coffee-table red-capped gnome books from my youth- and a crappy Saturday morning cartoon- that can't be the source, can it? That seems a little bit of a reach. And then at some point that conception evolved into them as Tinkerers and Gadgeteers, something I usually pictured as a Dwarven thing (thanks WHFB). By the time Everquest came out, that had been pretty well solidified in the gaming mythos. I suspect some players like them, but I've always left them out of my games as unnecessary.

A GM's Gonna HateOn the other hand, I've got some pretty active biases when it comes to other fantasy races. I don't like Hobbits or Halflings or Kinder or whatever you call them. That reaction comes out of the early days of my gaming, in the late 1970's when I played with a group that loved hobbits. Everyone played them and played them with a unified and clear method: back-stabbing, murderous, larcenous, awful, and unpleasant. Mind you, we were young and that was pretty much accepted as the way the game went, but it got on my nerves...about the fifth time I got ganked and had all my things taken by fellow PCs. From that point forward, I loathed hobbits in games. Haflings appear in my long-running fantasy campaign, but they're generally disliked and have a reputation for carts up on blocks out in the front yard of the mobile bolt-holes. So far, I haven't read any gamebook material which has pushed me to rethink that bias. I thought the Lord of the Rings movies might, but no. Ratling Snipers in the WH40K universe- cool and professional- were the only depiction that made me take notice. However now they're apparently "...small, loud, hungry and lecherous Abhumans" in the WH40K universe. So...yech.

My other bias creates more problems. I generally don't like Elves in most FRPGs. The material often uses the Elves as a contrast to humanity, and there's a haughtiness to many descriptions. With that also, an idea of that they possess simply by being Elves a superiority of aesthetics, morals and philosophy. In some cases, I can understand where that comes from. In the original Tolkien, they're representing a lost age, a people distinctly apart from humanity. They have their own weaknesses and biases, something which the whole Galadriel trip makes clear. However when Elves got brought over to other games it was with the serial numbers filed off. Elves can be haughty and superior, often gaining significant stat and ability bonuses or they may be haughty and superior but be the cultural equivalent of humans who live in the woods with funny ears. Beyond that perception of inherent superiority, I'm not sure I can put a finger on what bothers me about them. Ironically, I know that players in my group have their own set of biases. Some really despise the idea of Dwarves, while others react negatively to Orcs or Goblins being a playable race.

I Love My +1 CHA BonusOn the flip side, its interesting to see how people gravitate not only to a race, but often to a class as well. Running longer campaigns means that spotting those penchants becomes harder, but within our group we have some expectations. I know who will play the spooky girl or the character in contact with the spirit world. I also know which players will likely be the swashbuckler, and what flavor of that archetype they're likely move to. The one thing I do want to suggest is that there's nothing wrong with that, even if a player tends to run an incredibly specific kind of character: disfigured loner with family problems, anger management issues, unrequited love and a highly specific artistic talent. But you have to wonder why. What keeps drawing them back to that- and what experience are they trying to squeeze out of the game?

In our group we have a running joke that Elves are the "starter race" that fantasy gamers first gravitate to. I think that's not entirely untrue- and we do have some players who really like the Elves. So as a GM who doesn't have the greatest love for them, how do I provide the best experience? How do I make them work where the player's vision of what it means to be Elf actually runs up against what I most dislike in their conception? One response on my part has been to make changes, but also to try to offer a diversity of Elf types- each with a different ethos and background. However, that runs into another problem...Proliferation of RacesI’m not sure when it happened, but its interesting to consider the interaction of races in games. With that arises a confusion of terminology- for example, we have Elves as a distinctive "race" apart from humanity in most fantasy rpgs. However, in most cases, these races can cross-breed- resulting in half-Elves. Now that’s a detail drawn, of course, from Tolkien and to a lesser extent classic mythology. However that becomes interesting when that idea of cross-breeding then gets extended- so you end up with half-Dwarves, half-Orcs, half-Trolls, and so on. At the same time, we also have the fact of a distinct set of genetic and physical differences: Elves, Trolls, Humans, Dwarves- clearly different. So is it a question of "race" or is it one of "ethnicity"-- perhaps we’re talking about species, if that’s even a useful term.

At some point along the line of gaming as well, the desire to create more options, add more chrome and in general jazz up the place overcame designers. At that point we started to get things like Wood Elves, Mountain Elves, High Elves, Sea Elves and so on. Rolemaster would become one of the biggest offenders in this as it rolled along, beginning by splitting men into Common Men and High Men to start. Again, they borrowed a little from Tolkien, but it was still pretty odd. Of course in the case of Rolemaster, each race had its own set of bonuses for the different stats and other miscellaneous factors. If you let players take those straight up then you had some choices which were significantly optimal and some choices which no one should take. There’s the strange question of how much these divisions represent ethnicity again, cultural heritage or an actual division of physiology. I'm reminded of a chart I saw plotting the number of cat breeds over time, with an explosion occurring in the modern era.

That in itself leads to another problem and criticism, the Star Trek Forehead. The idea that essentially all the races essentially are humans with an accent and an FX prosthetic. In some games, I think that's not far off the mark. Where the design's lazy or where they've moved the classic fantasy elements over to another genre (Children of the Sun) the writers can fall into this trap. We also have the additional problem that the people running these non-human characters are themselves human. How do you give the players the keys to understand these roles? How can a game or setting avoid these problems? I'd say IMHO keeping a relatively small number of playable races, if there are classics then one or two of them should have a really new take, and perhaps one or two new races to play against those classic ones. Earthdawn for example, a game I've never played but have read, always brings me back because the background and races seem interesting. On the other hand, I'd also suggest designers really think through the purpose of the races in their game. Just having a deep history or the idea of these being Elves Xtreme doesn't really cut it. I've read a bunch of that stuff-- things that feel like they came out of someone's house campaign where they'd come up with a concept and then tacked things on to justify it. The best material manages to bring new approaches to bear at the same time as it makes sure that the races fit within the world. The best material has the munchkin cut out too.

ExpectationsThat fit is something that always concerns me. I've wrestled with the question of ethnicity in fantasy worlds before. Players have certain expectations about races- once you call something a Dwarf or a Drow, they'd better look like what the players have in their heads. If they don't, then the GMs job should be to offer a compelling and interesting take that the players can get behind. The reason needs to be more than just "I wanted something different". I've screwed that up in the past, but I've hit it better in some cases. I'm proudest of my take on the Drow. In my campaign, they were an ambiguous and isolated Elven people, keeping to a particular woods. Rumors suggested dark practices and the name itself helps create that bias in the player's minds. They would eventually learn that the Drow, while isolationist and somewhat xenophobic, considered themselves simply the oldest and most traditional Elvish groups. They'd rejected the changes and compromises of the other Elves. They're not evil Elves, but probably the most "Elfy" Elves of those in the campaign.

Expectations touch on the problematic question of nature vs. nurture. I have several Dark Folk races in my campaign who are not necessarily evil- they just have different ways. They've also been persecuted for having an ugly appearance and based on old legends. I don't like beating that drum too much however- some players really like the classic Orcs and Hobgoblins as bad guys. I tend to have a "liberal" and "modern" approach. I'll admit my sensitivities sometimes work against me; too much reversal of the "classic" material leaves players unsure and irritable. And my outlook means that absolutism of the factions and races in certain games really bugs me on a basic level. I've never liked the idea that certain races have inherent intangible talents. I think it was the Molday version of D&D which had races as classes, something I could never wrap my head around. Interestingly, I'm less bothered by something like race-specific classes, those which arise out of the culture of a people. For example, the way WHFRP handled those professions with things like the Dwarven Trollslayer. That made sense and came out of a vision of the people. But I keep getting stuck when we say that all or even most folk of fantasy race X behave like Y or can do Z.

Short Thoughts* Racial definitions represent an easy way for a fantasy setting or system to differentiate itself. For example, I don't "get" Eberron except for the Warforged. I love the idea of those guys...which probably means I'll steal them for another setting and likely violate what I've been saying.* Race books represent an easy book for a game company. They're a particular breed of "splat" book, easy to justify. On the other hand, how many books about Gnomes as a playable race do players need? How do companies break themselves out of that pack?* Races become tricky in explicitly balanced or point driven games. In GURPS, the racial packages end up balanced by a set of disadvantages. But most games also have a cap on disadvantage points- so should GMs have those count against that or not? I've had players react negatively to both approaches.

Solutions in Search of a Problem?So what's my approach for races? Well, I'm a little bit of a hypocrite in that I have a ton of them in my game, cobbled and patchworked together from various sources. A good deal of my effort over the years has been spent trying to create a justification for that- developing backstory, shifting race features and eliminating some that caused problems. In play, I usually suggest that of a group of 5-6 players, at most two can play non-humans. I do that for a couple of reasons. First, I want that choice to be important and distinctive. If you're the party Elf, then when we deal with things of the Elves, you can have ownership of those story moments. Second, too many races creates problems in terms of social interactions, limiting choices for the party as a whole. If they can't go into a city because they have someone of X race with them, that's bad. The potential limit on romantic options can be important, depending on the genre. It can create physical limitations, as in the case of the PC who ran a centaur. I've done the same thing with the Star Wars game I ran- limiting "distinctly" non-human PCs (humanoid don't really count). Chewbacca works precisely because of his alieness in those movies. Of course Tolkien acts as a counter-example to that approach. We have only one "human" per se in Lord of the Rings, Boromir and he gets gacked in Book One (no, Aragon doesn't count, he's a "high man" Numenorean, blah-blah).

Of course in some fantasy settings, I avoid the matter entirely. My wushu game sticks strictly with humans. But in some settings with non-human PCs, I ban them entirely. Legend of the Five Rings allows for Naga, Ratling and other races as PCs. I dislike that immensely. Even having a single PC of that type puts severe constraints on the other players and on the GM in terms of what they can run. Obviously the GM could push forward and run as usual, forcing the PC to deal with it. But that's not fun-- or at least it becomes less fun over time. And once that difference gets handwaved away, then what's the point?

Last WordSo what do I usually run? I think you can probably guess: humans. However, the next game I play in, I'm going to play a gnome. I think I owe it to them now.

Thursday, March 3, 2011

Background
I run several games and I don't usually play very much. But over the last few months I've been able to play in a Fallout-based campaign which has been really fun. The GMs built the rules to echo the setting, we've have audio-based clue, and twists which came at me out of left-field. This last Saturday he took a week off as a kind of "intermission" since we finally caught up in time to the prologue events of the game's opening sequence. I volunteered to run a one-shot because I'm always up for running- before I've actually had a chance to think about what I want to run or the work involved. Its also a chance to try out some experimental games. The group's six players plus the GM, so that ruled out Fiasco and some of the other small group improv games. We play a fairly rules-lite homebrew system for the majority of our campaigns, so I didn't want to throw new mechanics at them, so I left out Don't Rest Your Head, HeroQuest, Fudge, and such. Horror was requested or else I might have tried Time & Temp.

I spent most of the week before churning ideas over in my head. I have a set of scenarios written for cons (AFMBE, Conspiracy X, Armageddon) but some of the players had played in or heard about them. I had a breakthrough when I settled on using Dread to run the game. The players would have to learn only minimal rules. It would mean two steps for prep: making up individual questionnaires on the one hand, and buying a Jenga set on the other. I went through the rules carefully and read through the suggested scenarios. All three had some interesting features, but nothing grabbed me. I hunted down some of the other available modules, but one covered a post-Apocalyptic setting and the other, children's nightmares. I wanted to keep it fairly close to make it easy for the players to immerse themselves. A zombie game had some appeal, but I feared that done straight it might slip into more of a combat game which didn't seem particularly suited for Dread.

About the Game
If you haven't played Dread, I should probably explain it. It is a horror game with two particular innovations. First, the GM makes up a set of 13 questions for each player. With the exception of the final question ("What is your name?") these are unique. They establish some background for the players ("Why do you tell people you're an engineer when you really just drive trains?") and still gives the players space to come up with the details. Second, Dread uses a Jenga tower for resolution. Any time a character undertakes a difficult action, they have to draw a piece out and place it atop the tower. Really difficult or complex actions may require multiple pulls. Players may use the details from their character questionnaire to justify something being easier (and therefore not requiring a pull). That's a narrative device that I think would take a couple of sessions to get used to. What happens if the tower falls? That character's removed from the game. I'll come back to my reaction to that concept in a bit. Players can opt to reframe their actions or change their minds entirely at any point in the process. They can also voluntarily knock the tower over to be eliminated but succeed heroically at their action. So as you can see the games aimed at immersion supported by a particular involving resolution mechanic.

Horror One-Shots
I wanted to find something which would support that immersion. I have two basic approaches to horror one shots. The first is a kind of delayed gratification. I do a slow build up presenting many things which may or may not be related to the actual "horror" they're going to be investigating or encountering. A number of red herrings help put them on edge, especially if that can conceal a more mundane and surprising event. That works well if the players are already primed and expecting a horror game. You make them paranoid about things that don't matter- like having their car break down in the woods in the opening scene. They expect an attack but instead you use the moment to explore the PC's interactions. The other classic approach is to throw them deep in the middle of things- background doesn't matter so much, they're in a situation they have to deal with immediately. That doesn't necessarily have to be combat or an immediate "threat" but instead can be a shared strangeness. Amnesia’s the classic device for that.

The Premise
So you can start the players in an asylum in group therapy, waking up together in the middle of a police interrogation, or chained together in a house of traps. I knew I wanted to do something like that- the Dread questionnaire process does some of the legwork of building characters conflicts and relations. So how would that withstand some external threat? The three scenarios in the book played off of that but didn't have the blacking out. I was twisting around in about a dozen directions the morning of the game day when I finally figured out a device like this which would have some resonance. I would make The Hangover into a horror game. Not the most original idea, but something the players could buy into pretty quickly. I took some of the existing questionnaires from the book and modified them. Then I made up a set of cards, one for each player to be randomly distributed. They were as follows (they were in list form when I handed them to the players to make it easier):
Quote:

You wake up...
In just a bathrobe and silk pajamas; with a bag of white powder stuffed in the robe pockets; an aching left arm which reveals a badly bandaged gash; several packs of expensive imported cigarettes jammed under you; and a crumpled up packing ticket stuck in your sock. (Note: that was supposed to be parking but I had a ytpo)

You wake up...
In just your underwear; with a puking monkey sitting on your chest- he looks ill; desperately clutching a wavy and ornate dagger, the blade caked with dried blood; an empty bottle of absinthe in the other hand; and a really nice hair cut you didn’t have before.

You wake up...
In your normal clothes but with a lot more blood on them; with a horrible pain in your hands from deep straight scratches across the palms; an access key-code fob you’ve never seen before; an empty and used large bore syringe with the label removed; and a half-finished book of Mad Libs.

You wake up...
In some kind of haz-mat suit; with the taste and feel of jello shots covering your face; $30K dollars in poker chips stuffed into your pockets; bite marks and bruises on your hand; and the remote control for someone’s expensive TV in your pants

.

You wake up...
In a really nice outfit, but for the opposite gender; with a dead Blackberry you’ve never seen before in your hand; a vial of some brownish powder in your pocket; tribal tattoos drawn in permanent marker across your face; and a carefully arranged stack of tiny liquor bottles from the mini-bar.

You wake up...
In a good-looking business suit with a strange odor, with burn-marks on your fingertips; the keys to a BMW rental car nearly impaling you where you lie; a bent and ancient keycard; and shredded paper stuffed up your right sleeve.

Prep
Only after I assembled those and the questionnaires did I think about the game structure. I sketched some notes and incidents for about an hour, plus a list of NPC names. I knew how some of these things fit into my story, but I figured that I would connect most of it as we played. Finally, I set up the game room to support the atmosphere. I used a multi-head lamp aimed at a back corner to give a slightly dimmer light, enough to read by but less than the in-ceiling fluorescent. We use three 6' x 2 1/2' tables for gaming, two for the players and one abutted sideways against that as the GM’s space. I moved that back and brought down a high stool to sit on. That brought me closer to the players and at the same time elevated me to that I loomed over them.

Getting Started
Once everyone arrived I went through the basics of the game, the very basics. Dread has a few additional notes about resolution and so on but I stuck the key idea: pull if it is difficult. Horrors if you fail. I handed out the questionnaires and the "wake up" cards. I told them that we wold be doing a horror version of The Hangover, but gave them little information beyond that. Setting up the premise (at least part of it) is necessary to allow the players a chance for creative and fitting answers to their questions. If I hadn't I think it might have been a lot more difficult. With their question sheets and details of what they found on waking, I left. I think this actually really helped. We usually get pizza for the game when we play at Kenny’s house and have it delivered. Since we played at my house, I ordered carry-out from a close by and better pizza place. That gave the players about fifteen-twenty minutes to look over their sheets and bounce things around with me looming over them or answering requests. By the time I got back, they'd built a pretty coherent set of identities.

Diverging from Dread
I should also note that I kind of went against advice given in the Dread rules at this point. First, the book suggests that whenever a player topples the tower- they're out of the game. Period. They're removed. You might have some "ghosting" but generally, they're gone. That might work at a convention where people have the ability to head out if they die or stay if they want to watch, but I was hesitant about it. I had never played Jenga, so I had no sense of how many pulls it would take to knock over- which meant I erred on the side of caution. I told the players something horrific would happen- not quite as powerful as getting knocked out of the game but still. The actual play of the session meant that my worries never came to fruition. The second thing I did kind of works against the tone of Dread, building from a comedic premise. Dread specifically addresses humor as a venting device, but suggests curbing too much. I, however, wanted that contrast between the dark humor of the situation and the real darkness of it. I think I managed to provide a game where every time it got goofy, the players laughed and then recoiled from the horror around.

The Game ItselfNote: this was a horror game, and a pretty gruesome one- so consider yourself warned, NSFW.

So the group woke up in a trashed hotel room, with all kinds of awfulness around. We had one wake up on the wet bathroom floor, only to realize it wasn't the tub which had overflowed. Chas flung the bag of white powder at Dave to wake him up, resulting in a brief cocaine freak-out for his character. The monkey induced fits in Dave, who had to be put down briefly with a golf club to the back of the head. They looked picked themselves up and began to search around. They noted the absence of the groom, Bob Howard, and found a number of additional clues. Most notably, the DHS Agent who had wandered into one of the bedrooms and slit his own wrists with a straight razor. During this whole time-- investigating, getting cleaned up, trying to put themselves to right, realizing the power had gone out-- a couple of them noted the deep yellow color to the sunlight coming in where they'd cracked the curtains open a little. Finally, close to forty-five minutes into play, someone opened the curtains and looked outside.

And saw the devastation which had rocked Las Vegas. Windows had been broken out, fires burned in various places, plumes of smoke rose upwards, the wrecks of cars jammed the streets of the strip, and the sky had a dark yellow cast to it, a sepia tone that colored everything. They saw some...things...more vague movement...in and among the car husks down below. Some settled on the idea of their having been a nuclear war, but others weren't convinced.

Exploration began, somewhat hesitantly. They saw half-open doors in the hotel halls but avoided looking in any of them. On the roof they found nearly a hundred pairs of shoes lined up at the roof edge- left behind by people who had leapt to their doom hand-in-hand. The weirdness meter continued to rise. They headed down to the garage to follow up on a parking stub and the strange keys. Along the way they saw bloody handprints, strange etched sings of a five inside a diamond, and other evidence of something horrible having occurred. Of course throughout this, they had no real light sources. If you've ever been to a casino hotel you'll realize they have no windows. Some emergency lights aided them, but by the time they got to the underground parking garage they were pretty freaked out. So when they found the pile of shucked human skins neatly folded next to the stairs, they kind of lost it.

In the words of Ward: "I'm sorry, what kind of nuclear bomb blows just the skin off of people?"

They headed down and decided to push the panic button on the car key fob. That allowed them to track the car down by the honking and flashing lights. Of course before they got there they saw a figure coming towards them illuminated by the blinking of the headlights. Have you ever seen those guys who put on multiple t-shifts until they look like a Sumo wrestler? Imagine that with human skin suits: sausage-like fingers, layers of lips, and great empty black corridors where its eyes should be.

It lunged at Kenny. As did I IRL, which freaked Jacque, making her flinch and spill hot coffee on herself. A job well-done for me! The group knocked the Skin Collector down and ran for it. It scuttled along under the other parked cars Silent Hill-style, but managed to get to the car. They hit the gas and made a break for it, speeding through the garage until they came to the lowered garage door. Ward braked and stopped in time, managing only to set off the air bag. At that point they heard pounding from the trunk. They popped it and found Boris Elk, a hippie looking dude who told them they'd jammed him in their when they went to Kinko's last night. He seemed in pretty good spirits, having slept off a bender in the car. The group noticed the truck also had a shotgun and some clips for the Fed's gun, giving them some defenses and a few more clues. Elk asked if he could have his cocaine back and they told him they'd left it up in the room. Affable, he agreed to go check on that- and then got flying tackled by something and knocked between parked cars. The group made a break for it, with Dave pausing to look back just long enough to see the thing coming after them in Elk's skin.

The group made their way through the wreckage of Las Vegas on foot. They avoided awful beasties but I managed to spend some time getting across the horror and alien feeling. In Kinkos they figured out that they'd come there, used the scanning services and uploaded some things to Facebook. They fled out of there ahead of a Clive Barker-esque monster made up of tangled bodies. They followed another clue to an Animal Quarantine facility, which they discovered happened to be adjacent to the local DHS building. They also found Dave's abandoned SUV. A mod of monsters swarmed them and after some spectacular shooting, they fled into the DHS building.

There they found Emergency Channel 5 operating and broadcasting to every device in the region. It was a looped tape of them laughing and reading from an ancient tome. Clearly they'd obtained this and decided it would be hilarious to speak the words out loud. The tape loop ended with them still laughing and the Groom beginning to shake. It was about this time that the group realized they'd caused all of this, between broadcasting an invocation to Ylgonac and uploading scans of the mind-blasting tome to their Facebook page. Chas reached for a bible she'd brought in hope that it would help.

And it was here that the tower finally fell. You see Ylgonac's a pseudo-Lovecraftian figure who is all about infecting ideas, like books. So as Chas began to read, the ink on the pages ran out and infected her. And BOOM the other PCs killed her. Putting two and two together, they realized they'd infected Facebook in the same way. Suddenly they heard a broadcast over the DHS channels checking for survivors. They now had twenty minutes to get to the Luxor Casino for a landing pad pick up. With the Jenga tower rebuilt following Chas' death, I had them pulling like fiends for just about everything in the hope of getting it to crash again. Just before they got to the last level, Dave opted to crash the tower voluntarily, sacrificing himself to save the other four. The helicopter took off into the yellowed sky with the survivors.

Overall
So decent session for a one shot. Dread worked pretty well and I would use it again. I had a timeline and details for about half the bits on the handouts. The rest I began to put together as we played. It's a pretty workable approach. The one thing you do have to accept is that you won't tie everything together like the movie. I suppose you could plan it out more tightly and I might do that if I ever run this at a convention. Next time I will definitely make players pull more. I'd also consider doing the game in chairs around a coffee table, rather than at a shared table with the tower atop it. I was pretty happy with the play and the system.